Toastmasters Ice Breaker Speech

- Beginning -

Mr. Toastmaster

Ladies and Gentleman

What would you want you life to be about, when you die one day?

What would you want to be engraved as your epitaph? [Pause 3 seconds]

For me I want it to be, “Here lays a man of power, love and courage”.

Power in that I have the power to influence and inspirer people to be more than who they can be.

Love in that I want people to experience the loving kindness and the goodness of this world.

Courage, in that I want inspire people to stand up for what they believe in and have courage to speak their mind and speak the truth.

6 Minutes is impossible for me to cover everything about myself, so I will focus on 3 related events of my life that have shaped my character and cause me to be who I am today.

The first event of my life was the encounter with a fortune teller when I was age 6. Each and every one of us have our own faiths and believes, some are Muslims, some Christians and some Buddhist, well for my family we are partly Buddhist and partly Taoist. Hence the prophecy of the fortune teller is really taken into serious account.

In a Chinese family back in the 70s and 80s boy were considered pride of the family, and in my family there was only me and my sister, with that my family have high hopes and expectations me, that is the reason they brought me to the fortune teller, but to my parents dismay, the fortune teller said that I would amount to nothing because the markings I have at my face and hands.

At the tender age of 6, I thought to myself well that really suck, I have no choice on how the markings are on my hand and my face, and it is not fair that I have to live my life of no achievements just because of the stamp. [Hit the fist on the Hand]

From there on I have decided that in life I will always end what I started, and I will never, never, never, never give up no matter what. That my friend is the first lesson of my life, to never give up.

The following event that changed my life was when I was 17, right after I graduated from High School, S.P.M, I went straight to work. Guess what I was working as ? [pause 2 second]. I landed a working opportunity as a construction laborer, yes you have guessed it, hard labor under the scorching sun, side by side with the Indonesians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and the African Indians, mixing sand with cement, laying bricks, transporting sand and bricks from one location to another. 

I got RM 600.00 as my first month salary, I was ecstatic, high from the abundance felling that I have derived form the amount of salary, but being a good and loyal son, I gave all the money to my mother. Motivated to find more money, I constantly ask myself how can I earn more from this labor job. One day the opportunity came, when the construction site supervisor announce that the site need overtime workers as there is a rush to complete the project, and of course I volunteered immediately.

I started work at 9a.m. till 5 a.m. at the next morning, each day only having 4 hours of sleep, Guest how long I lasted? [Pause 3 seconds] I only lasted for 3 months then I collapsed, this is the time I learned the second lesson of life, “Know your limits”. I asked a stupid question that worked against me.

The tragedy in life is not that you couldn’t find the answer to a question, but rather that you used up all the time in your life concentrating on the wrong question.

I repeat and this is important, listen, “The tragedy in life is not that you couldn’t find the answer to a question, but rather that you used up all the time in your life concentrating on the wrong question.”

Instead of asking how much more I can earn from this labor job, I should ask “How can I use my existing skills and talents to be of service to more people and in turn earn more money”.

Which brings me to the 3 learning event of my life, asking the question about my talents and skills, the only option for me was to expand in them, so that I can be of service to more people, at my time while I graduated from my High School, Information Technology was the thing, it was the trend, there are a lot of job offers under it, and one day as I was listening to the radio, their were airing an advertisement about APIIT open day, so without delaying I went to the openday.

I was really concern about the fact that I am going to learn this new thing, which I was not exposed to, not even when I am in the secondary school, yes, I don’t event know how a mouse looked like, seriously. They staff of APIIT ensure me that that is no issue there is no computing background required, well that is really not true. I remember the first day when the lecture ask us to fill in our email address at the attendance list. At that time I was the first student in the batch to ask the first question, “What is an E-MAIL? Yes that was what I asked, every one laughed, one guy was kind enough to interrupt the class and offered to teach me at break time, he thought me step by step how to create a hotmail account, I am using it until today. I studied earnestly, going to school at 8a.m. in the morning and leaving the college at 8p.m. trying to pick up, trying to chase the rest of the students, guess what, I got a second class upper degree as a result.

The result made me proud and was my pride, I feel proud not because of vanity, not because now that I can use it to compare with other people, but because I have proven the fortune teller wrong, because I have defy fate in my family’s believe and have been victorious against it.

This my friend was the most important lesson of my life, “YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE NO MATTER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES YOU ARE IN !!!”.

When the going gets tough the tough gets going, a person’s true character can only be revealed via challenging circumstances, if you get past an obstacle your capability grows, and the more obstacles you get past the more capabilities you accumulate. The more capabilities you accumulate the more people you can serve, when you can serve a lot of people with your capability then my friend you need not worry about being able to provide for your family.

With this I conclude my speech, thank you.

 - Ending -